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Month: May 2014

A requirement of the unit was to engage in a formative assessment activity were I was to mark and provide written feedback to two peers. This activity was very beneficial as this was my first experience in marking peer work using an assessment rubric. As a teacher marking is something that will be a requirement on a regular basis and in large amounts.

This activity provided the opportunity for me to think about what feedback could benefit the peer. It enabled me to consider what effective marking is and the benefits constructive feedback can have on a students learning. If feedback is provided focusing on all aspects; both positive and negative it can enable the student to reflect and understand areas requiring improvement.

Reflection on the Peer Marking

The peer feedback received was useful in some respect allowing some further changes to my blog to improve the final presentation. Not both peer feedbacks suggested improvements and the grading issued by each peer was different, with peer two suggesting a higher grade than peer one. However peer one provided a more indepth feedback focusing on both postive and negative aspects of the blog, where peer two provided positive feedback only.

The feedback from peer one was constructive offering areas of improvement, whilst also recognising the areas that have been completed to a high standard requiring no change. One section of the feedback I disagree with, where peer one was suggesting some blog entries were missing. However rather than ignoring that section of the feedback I proactively investigated the blog ensuring there were no technical issues with the blog suggesting that some viewers were not able to see all blog entries. This clarified that there were no issues with the blog and it was just purely a mistake from the peer one’s point of view. An email was sent to peer one to confirm this and a response was received advising once the blog fully loaded all blog entries were visible.

No changes were made to the blog based on the feedback from peer two as the feedback provided positive feedback only and suggested no improvements or changes to the blog. However varies changes were made to the blog based on the feedback from peer one. The changes made to the blog are as follows:

– Embedded the Prezi on the Global Poverty Project into the blog for a more visual appeal

– Completed the digital fluency post as this was not complete at the time of the peer marking

– Suggested in some areas how the technology can be used in the classroom and how it can support the learning.

A 60 minutes lesson, planned for Year 2 students that involves the use of Prezi; a modern technology to create interactive presentations. The lesson is linked to outcomes in the Australian Curriculum and focuses on the learning areas Geography and Digital Technologies. The lesson plan is developed around the topic travel and using maps, which has been the classroom topic for the past 2 weeks. The learning objectives of this lesson focus on children using technology; Prezi to present a story in a digitally creative way. This lesson will work on further developing students prior knowledge on understanding maps and identify what maps are used for. From understanding maps, students will recognise distance and accessibility to different places.

This week the Global Poverty Project was explored. A prezi was created to present a digitally creative presentation on what the project is about, what they do, who they are and examples of the work they perform.

Lifelong Learning

Lifelong learning may be broadly defined as learning that is pursued throughout life; learning that is flexible, diverse and available at different times and in different places.The European Lifelong Learning Initiative defines lifelong learning as:“a continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and to apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment, in all roles, circumstances, and environments” (Watson, 2003 cited in Lifelong Learning Council QLD Inc, 2013).

Teachers in this modern age need to be lifelong learners. Effective teaching with technology requires constant learning. I normally consider myself a Digital Native, however this activity really tested my competency in learning new technologies. It was not the initial creating of the Prezi but the embedding of the Prezi into the blog that faced me with some difficulties. I searched a number of forums and documents on the web to help understand how to embed the Prezi into the blog. Most of the information I found on the web regarding embedding Prezi’s was not accurate information, so I really had to evaluate the quality of the resources I was accessing on the internet. I expressed a number of ways to gain information on how to embed a Prezi and I even started a forum on the official Prezi website. Support on the Prezi website responded to my concern and advised me it was impossible to embed a Prezi on a wordpress.com blog due to privacy and security reasons. However I was not satisfied with this response and expressed further options. I posted a thread on the discussion board to my peers and sent an email to my peer buddy; who was one of my buddies for the peer rubric marking activity. After receiving back my peer marking feedback, my peer gave me a useful link on inserting Prezi documents which worked. So after all the attempts and nothing working, these steps finally worked! For all my peers out there having the same issue, below is the useful and accurate resource on how to insert/embed a Prezi document onto a blog.

Prezi in the Classroom:

Presentation software is commonly used in education settings (Howell, 2012, p.154). Teachers can use Prezi to present lessons or even design student activities/ assessment so the use of Prezi can be utilised by the students. Prezi is a free online program and as the presentations are stored on the Prezi website, students can access them from any computer. As stated by Jennifer Howell (2012), internet programs are very worthwhile using due to their popularity with young learners, and would be an ideal project (p. 156). Prezi is a modern technology tool which can provide students with the opportunity to explore a technology that is popular in todays world. Prezi can support a number of different learning areas such as mathematics, science, english as the content that the students would be required to add to their Prezi’s can be changed to reflect the area of learning being taught.

Digital blurring; transferring the skills from the technologies we use in our private lives into our learning worlds. The technologies we use in our private lives by choice can help in the learning contexts, as the skills and experience gained can be transferred into our learning worlds to help further learn new technologies and the ever-changing digital world we live in.

It is vital teachers in this modern age are equipped with the necessary skills to teach in a digital age. Students are habitually using technology in their lives at a far greater level than previous generations and they expect their education to be rich with technology to equip them for their future professional lives in this modern world (Howell, 2013). Therefore teachers need to ensure they are including a wide range of different technologies that enhance the learning experience for the students. However including a wide range of technology is not all that teachers need to consider, they also need to consider if the technology being included is allowing learning outcomes to be met. The demand to receive an education rich with technology is increasing as the use of technology in modern students lives increases. Modern students are experienced in a range of digital technologies such as smartphones, web browsing, platform games such as Xbox, PlayStation, online gaming, Web 2.0; Facebook, Instagram, Tweeter and popular ‘apps’ (Howell, 2013).

Gaming as a learning tool:

Gamification is applying game like mechanics to existing content such as points, levels, leaderboards, badges and so on, to make it more interactive and improve user experience. Gamifying not only increases interactivity but increases awareness and rewards challenging tasks. Gamification Education (http://badgeville.com/wiki/education/)

Gamifying is a creative teaching method to learn content in a creative and hands on way. Jane McGonigal a Game Designer, believes gaming can make a better world. She has a strong view that gaming can help us save and improve the world. She states that students can achieve more in games and games give the motivation to stick at solving a problem. Gaming in her opinion is a tool that gives students the feeling of achievement. It allows the feeling that you can achieve more in a game then what you would feel you could achieve in the real world (McGonigal, 2010).

Moreover if students enjoy playing games, then incorporating gaming into the educational context could be very beneficial. By adding new technologies into educational contexts means learning in schools can be more engaging and interesting. However teachers must aim to maintain, extend and build new competencies in technology (Howell, 2013).

Using ‘Sploder’ was a great experience which really made me focus of appreciating the effort that goes into creating games. This was the first time I used ‘Sploder’ and prior to this experience, I must admit I would enjoy playing games but never focused on how much effort it actually takes someone to create a game that we are using as enjoyment or to play while relaxing.

Sploder defiantly has value in incorporating such technology in the learning and teaching experience for the modern age students we will be teaching. Sploder can be used as an technology tool that children can use to create their own games. I can just vision the sense of achievement that the children would receive from creating their own online game to play and enjoy. Using Sploder in the classroom would further develop the children’s use in different software programs and digital systems. It would provide the students with an opportunity to explore a modern technology that is popular in the modern world they are growing up in and learning in.

Teachers teachings in this digital age need to aim at providing enough opportunity to enable students to become digitally fluent users of technologies. Accordingly to Jennifer Howell (2013) the objective for primary school teachers is simple and for effective learning with technology to be achieved the phase of learning is to be anchored to creativity activity, experimental activity and purposeful activity. The focus of the outcomes of these activities should be to develop digital content creators, technology innovators and digitally fluent users of technologies (p. 147).

The range of digital technologies that can be used in the primary classroom is wide. The following technologies are some that allow for the development of skills and also the expansion of experiences with different types of technologies:

– Work processing (Word) – Word processing is a basic and important skill needed by students throughout their formal schooling and the level of expertise should increase as students process through primary school.

– Spreadsheet (Excel) – Spreadsheets can be useful and used for varies learning opportunities such as simple mathematical computations such as addition, division and subtraction, presenting data, and for alphabetical data such as names, places and other information.

– Advanced web-searching skills – It is important students skills are built upon in becoming familiar with search engines such as Google to enable the ability to become proficient at searching for information on the internet and analysing critically the information that is found.

– Publishing – Publishing programs are extremely useful tools for students to learn during primary schooling. There is a lot of skills and knowledge associated with using publishing programs, particularly in areas of formatting, genre and different types and styles of writing that make them attractive inclusions in the classroom activities. The formats and templates available in publishing programs match a number of learning outcomes and offer students a strong feeling of achievement and pride.

– Making a video or movie – It is a complex process with varies stages which offers the opportunity for students to learn a wide range of skills. Making a video or movie can be extremely rewarding as students have an end product that they can see and show to others. The process involves planning, filming and editing and each stage has its own set of skills and knowledge, thus it a great tool that will enable a rich learning experience.